Four Companies Selling Self-Driving Car Platforms Today, And One Coming

For companies or even hackers hoping to build a self-driving car, one of the first questions is, "Where do I get the vehicle?"

This is a harder question than it might seem. For all the difficulty of developing autonomous vehicle software and training machine learning models, getting hold of a vehicle that can run the code is still a challenge.

The ADAS kit from Dataspeed turns an off-the-lot Lincoln MKZ or Ford Fusion into a drive-by-wire vehicle. That means a computer can completely control the car. As the Dataspeed website highlights, the system can even be connected to a video game controller.

Comma's claims that its OpenPilot software, "performs the functions of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS) for Hondas, Acuras, Toyotas, and a Chevy. It's about on par with Tesla Autopilot and GM Super Cruise, and better than all other manufacturers." Although the software is open-source, the best way to connect it to a vehicle is to purchase Comma's EON Dashcam DevKit. Also, note that Comma is explicit: "This product is not designed to drive a car. This product is designed to be a dashcam."

The Milee and Logiee platforms from Tier IV are not available quite yet, but are "coming soon." Given Tier IV's success as the company behind the widely-adopted Autoware open-source self-driving car project, their vehicle platforms are worth looking out for.

I lead the Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree Program at Udacity, which has trained thousands of engineers to work on autonomous vehicles. Udacity students have joined self-driving car teams at companies like Lyft, Mercedes-Benz, and NVIDIA. Prior to Udacity, I was a resea...